Water Bears Can Even Survive Unprotected In Space

From Scientific Blogging:

The dried-up tardigrades were aboard the FOTON-M3 spacecraft launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) in September 2007 and were exposed to open space conditions i.e. to vacuum, UV radiation from the sun and cosmic radiation in a low Earth orbit of around 270km altitude. After their safe return to Earth, it turned out that while most of them survived exposure to vacuum and cosmic rays alone, some had even survived the exposure to the deadly levels of solar UV radiation, which are more than 1000 times higher than on the surface of the Earth. Even more so, the survivors could reproduce fine after their space trip. [Water Bears Can Even Survive Unprotected In Space]